The last 25 years has seen a dramatic shift in computer network configurations. The highly centralized, mainframe-based computing mode has given way to the decentralized client/server design commonly found in today's data centers. More recently, the Storage Area Network (SAN) is essentially a hybrid of the two models.
SANs often consist of several types of servers running different operating systems. This enables users from a wide variety of platforms to access common storage information. But because of inherent bandwidth considerations, not to mention corruption and security concerns, network performance cannot be maximized until resources are allocated.
Zoning is one method of resource allocation. Zoning is a logical separation of traffic between host and resources. By breaking up a network into zones, groups of servers and storages devices may be separated. Thus, isolated, the activities of one group do not affect the activities of the others.